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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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Dow to Become 

a Cbrtstian. 



jfive Simple 



3BB 

Rev. LYiidN Abbott, 



d.&. 



Published by 

Fleming H. Revell 

Company, 
New York 

amd Chicago. 



popular IDellum Series, 



Chaste Paper Covers, 16mo, 32 pages, each %0c. 
May also be had with very choice hand-painted floral designs 
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fX)W tO aBecOttte a GbnetiatU Five Simple Talks. 

By Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D. 

1. Disciples or Scholars. 2. Believers or Faithful. 
3. Followers or Soldiers. 4. Brethren or Members of the 
Household. 5. Saints or the Holy. 

ZfoC JFOUr /IReru By Rev. James Stalker, D. D., 
author of "The Life of Jesus Christ/ J etc. 

1. The Man the World Sees. 2. The Man Seen by the 
Person Who Knows Him Best. 3. The Man Seen by Him- 
self. 4. The Man Whom God Sees. 

Gbe afiflbt of jf aitb an& tbe Cost of Gbaracter, 

Talks to Young Men. By Rev. Theodore L. Cuy- 
ler, D.D. 

fbope * The Last Thing in the World. By Rev. A. T. 
Pierson, D.D. 

f)0W to Xeartt f)0W* Addresses. —I. Dealing 
with Doubt, II. Preparation for Learning. By 
Prof. Henry Drummond, F.R.S.E., F.G.S. 

Zbe JFitSt ZbiXiQ in tbe TWlOrlD ; or, the Primacy 
of Faith. By Rev. A. J. Gordon, D.D. 

Zbe fl&essage of 5e6U0 to d&en of Mealtb* a 

Tract for the Times. By Rev. George E. Herron. 
Introduction by Rev. Josiah Strong. 

fl>0Wer ftOtn On IbiQb: Do You Need It, What is 
It, Can You Get It ? By Rev. B. Fay Mills. 

Zbe ipetfeCteD Xife: The Greatest Need of the 
World. By Prof. Henry Drummond. 

%OVe> tbe Supreme (Sift. The Greatest Thing in 
the World. By Prof. Henry Drummond. 



New York. FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY. Chicago- 



HOW TO BECOME 

A CHRISTIAN. 



How to Become 

a Christian. 



give gitmple ®&I$t* to the iuwng. 



REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D. 



ZS32.3 W l 



NEW YORK and CHICAGO. 

Fleming fx IRevelt Company 

Publishers of Evangelical Literature. 






Ths Library 
of Congress 

WASHINGTON 






Copyright, 1891, 

— by — 

Fleming H. Revell Company. 



HOW TO BECOA\E A 

CHRISTIAN. 



I. Disciples* 

A PICTURE rises before me, as I write, 
of a little boy in a country church, in 
. . . the high, straight-backed pew, his legs 
. . . dangling uncomfortably, unable to 
reach the floor. He had a vague sense that 
he was a sinner, though he could not have 
told of anything very wrong that he had 
done. He felt that he ought to be a Chris- 
tian, but he neither knew what a Christian 
was nor how to become one. He occasion- 
ally heard a creed read in church which 
seemed to him rather long, and quite impos- 
sible for him to understand, and he supposed 
that he must understand it and believe it be- 
fore he could be a Christian. He used to 
look at the gray-haired saints about him, and 
think when he grew old enough he would be 

(5) 



6 tyow to Become a Christian. 

a Christian, much as he used to look with 
admiration at the stage-driver who drove 
the four-horse stage past his grandfather's 
door, and think that when he was old enough 
he would drive a stage. He did not think 
it wicked not to be a stage-driver, but he 
did think it somehow wicked not to be a 
Christian, and it occasionally made him very 
unhappy. But to be a Christian while he 
was a little boy seemed to him just as impos- 
sible as to be a stage-driver while he was a 
little boy. So he waited until he was a 
senior in college before he joined the church, 
and he has always looked back with keen re- 
gret upon those eight or ten years during 
which he might have been a joyous Chris- 
tian, and with a great desire to tell boys and 
girls, who are of a like mind, how very simple 
and how very joyous it is to be a Christian. 
There are five words by which in the New 
Testament Christians are called. If you un- 
derstand what these five mean you will un- 
derstand what is a Christian, and how to 
become one. They are : 

Disciples or Scholars. 

Believers or the Faithful. 

Followers or Soldiers. 

Brethren or Members of the household. 
•Saints or the Holy. 



£}ovo to Become a (Ebrtsttan. 



A Christian is, first of all, a disciple — that 
is, a scholar. Christ has come into the world 
to teach something, and a Christian is one 
who has entered his school and is learning 
of him. You will sometimes hear people 
say that it does not make any difference 
what a man believes. But the very object 
of going to school is to believe something 
which you did not believe before. All 
learning consists in asking questions and 
getting information, in wondering or doubt- 
ing, and then, as a result of the wondering 
or doubting, and of the consequent study, in 
learning to believe something which you 
never before believed. So a Christian is one 
who comes to Christ as to a school-teacher, to 
learn something which Christ has to teach 
him. If he thinks it does not make any 
difference what he believes, he will not 
go to school and he will not learn any- 
thing. 

And it is coming to Christ to learn the 
things which Christ came to teach. He did 
not teach the sort of things you learn in 
school. He did not teach spelling, or his- 
tory, or arithmetic, or geography, or natural 
science. And he did teach the things about 
which most boys and girls learn very little 
at school. He taught the answers to such 



8 £}ow to Become a Christian, 

questions as these: What is it to be good? 
What is it to be bad ? And what is the dif- 
ference between the two ? When we die, 
what happens ? What becomes of us ? The 
body is put in the grave. Is the boy or the 
man put into the grave? If not, what be- 
comes of the boy or the man that loved and 
laughed and wept and was angry and was 
joyful ? Where did this strange world come 
from ? Where did I come from ? Who made 
me? And what did he make me for? Can 
I know him. And talk with him ? And will 
he hear what I have to say ? And does he 
care about the things that I care about? 
And if I want to talk with him and get his 
advice or his help, how shall I do it? When 
I have done wrong and am unhappy, what 
can I do to get rid of the wrong and the un- 
happiness? If I want to control my temper 
or my vanity, if I want to be good and pure 
and true and brave, like my father or my 
mother, or some hero I have read about, 
what can I do to be what I want to be? 
These are the questions which Christ an- 
swered. And to be a Christian is to go to 
school to Christ, and listen to his answers, 
and try to learn what is the truth which he 
teaches us. 

But — and this I want particularly to make 



f}ott> to Become a (Efyrtsttan. 9 

you see and believe — to be a scholar is not 
to know what Christ has taught, but to go to 
Christ in order to learn. There are a great 
many people who seem to imagine that you 
must believe a creed in order to become a 
Christian. Not at all ! You become a Chris- 
tian in order that you may learn the truth, 
and so believe a creed. You do not have to 
know geography in order to study it ; you 
have to study it in order to know it. And 
you do not have to know and believe 
what Christ taught in order to be Chrises 
scholar; you have to be Christ's scholar in 
order to know and believe what Christ 
taught. 

There was a jail in a Roman town in 
Paul's time in the charge of a cruel and igno- 
rant Roman jailer. He knew nothing about 
the Bible, or Sunday, or Christ, or any life 
after death. He had never heard of so 
much as the Ten Commandments or the 
Lord's prayer. He did not even know that 
God was good and wished him to be good. 
He had beaten Paul and Silas cruelly, and 
then put them in a horrible underground 
dungeon, dark and wet and cold, and fastened 
their feet in cruel stocks. But their hearts 
were so light that they sang songs in the 
midnight, and the other prisoners were 



10 tyow to Become a Christian. 

listening to them, when suddenly an earth- 
quake shook the prison and threw some 
of the walls down, so that the prisoners 
might have escaped. The terrified jailer 
would have killed himself. Perhaps he 
thought an angry God had come to take 
vengeance on him. Perhaps he merely feared 
that he would be tortured and put to death 
if his prisoners got away. Paul suspected 
what the jailer was about to do, and called 
out to him, Do thyself no harm, we are all 
here. And the jailer called for a light, and 
came down into the dungeon all trembling, 
and asked Paul and Silas, What must I do 
to be saved? And they said to him, Be- 
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou 
shalt be saved, and thy house. And 
they took him and baptized him that same 
night into the Church of Christ. He did not 
know anything — a great deal less, certainly, 
than any reader of this book knows — about 
God, or heaven, or duty, or Christ, or love. 
But he wanted to learn ; and wanting to 
learn of Christ was enough to make him 
Christ's scholar. 

Do you want to learn what Christ has to 
teach? If you do, that is all that is neces- 
sary to become a disciple or scholar cf 
Christ. 



I}ott> to Become a Christian. 11 

II, Believers. 

Christians are called in the New Testa- 
ment disciples or scholars. That is, they 
are persons who go to Christ to learn what 
he has to teach. They are also called Be- 
lievers, or the Faithful. What do these 
words mean? 

First, they mean the same thing. The 
New Testament, you know, was originally 
written in Greek. Now the same Greek 
word is sometimes translated belief and 
sometimes faith; and the same Greek word 
is sometimes rendered believer and some- 
times faithful. To believe in Christ is, then, 
the same as to have faith in Christ. I have 
told you that to be a disciple of Christ 
is not to believe all that Christ has taught, 
but to go to school in order that you may 
learn what he has taught. So now I want 
to make it clear to you that to believe in 
Christ is not the same thing as to believe 
something about Christ. The difference 
can best be made clear by a simple story. 

Some years ago I w r as coming out of a 
restaurant in New York City with my wife. 
I stopped a moment at the desk to pay my 
bill while she turned toward the door. 
Suddenly I was startled by a child's cry of 



12 fjotp to Become a Christian* 

distress: "Mamma! mamma!" I turned, 
but, quick as I was, my wife was quicker. 
She had sprung forward and caught the lit- 
tle lost child by the hand. And the little 
girl — not over four or five years old — was 
standing looking up into my wife's face ; the 
tear had stopped in her eye, and the cry was 
hushed, and she was looking up with confi- 
dence and hope into the eyes which looked 
down so quietly and calmly into hers, 
and the little lost child somehow, felt that 
she had been found and that all would be 
right. In a moment more the mother had 
missed her child and came hurrying back, 
and the little girl, crying again, but in a very 
different tone, " Mamma! mamma!" sprang 
from my wife's hands into her mother's arms, 
and both disappeared into the street. 

Now, in this case the little girl knew noth- 
ing about my wife ; she did not know her 
name, nor who she was, nor where she came 
from, nor anything about her. But there 
was something in the strong, kind face 
which looked down into hers, and in the 
firm grasp of the friendly hand that reas- 
sured her. She believed in the stranger, 
though she did not believe anything about 
the stranger. And because she believed in 
the stranger she was comforted and her ter- 



fjom to Become a Christian, 13 

ror was taken away. This is to believe in 
Christ. Not to think something about 
Christ, but to trust in him. 

The disciples in the New Testament be- 
lieved in Christ before they believed any- 
thing about Christ. He was walking along 
the street one day and he saw a tax-gatherer 
collecting taxes, and he said to him, Follow 
me, and Matthew closed up his business at 
once, and left it, and followed Christ. He 
did not know for a year afterwards that 
Christ was the Messiah ; nor until three 
years after that Christ would die for the sins 
of the world and would rise again. He be- 
lieved in Christ and followed him (as the 
little girl believed in my wife and trusted 
her) before he had learned anything about 
Christ's character, or what Christ had come 
into the world to do. If you will read care- 
fully the scenes in the New Testament of 
Christ's cures of the blind, the deaf, the 
paralytics, you will see that in almost every 
case they knew very little about Christ or 
his plans. He was a stranger, but they be- 
lieved in him because they saw that he was 
good and kind and just and true and wise. 

To believe in Christ, then, is not to believe 
something about Christ ; it is to — but what 
it is I can best illustrate by another story. 



14 f}ou> to Become a (Efyrtsttan, 

On the Atlantic coast are what are called 
life-saving stations. They are stations where 
are kept a lifeboat and a crew of men 
ready to go off through the surf whenever 
the storm drives a ship on shore. One dark 
night some years ago, the captain of a life- 
saving station was awakened by hearing the 
sound of a gun off the coast, and he knew 
that a ship was in distress. He hurried 
down to the shore with his comrades, and 
through the darkness and the storm — for it 
was an awful night — he could descry the 
faint outline of a ship. She had grounded 
on a sand bank some way out from the 
shore, and there she lay, while every mo- 
ment the great waves broke over her. Some- 
times in such cases men manage with 
a mortar — a kind of great gun — to shoot a 
rope from the shore out to the wreck. 
Then by means of this rope the men on ship 
pull a bigger rope after it, and so make a 
kind of rope bridge — " life-line " they call 
it — between the ship and the shore, on 
which they fasten a car in which the passen- 
gers can be pulled ashore. But the ship 
was too far from the shore for such a 
life-line. So the captain and his men got 
into the life boat, and launched it, pushing 
it out through the surf, and rowed out 



' tyow to Become a Christian, 15 

through the waves and the darkness. With 
great difficulty they got the boat alongside 
the ship, and the captain climbed up by a rope 
and found himself on the ship's deck. Then 
he told the men on the ship where they were 
and what they were to do. They were on a 
sand bar, perhaps half a mile off shore. Be- 
yond the bar was deep water, and beyond 
the deep water was the land, and men ready 
to rescue them." " If you stay here," he 
said, "your ship will be beaten to pieces by 
the violence of the waves. Slip your anchor 
chains, let the ship go ; the tide is coming 
in ; and the tide and the great waves will 
carry the ship over the sand bar into the 
deep water, and across the deep water to 
the mainland ; when she once has run up on 
the beach there, we can all manage to get 
safe to shore." They did as he told them, 
and all the ship's crew and passengers were 
saved. 

Now, in this case, the ship's crew believed 
in the captain who had come out to them. 
They did not know anything about him ; 
but they believed in him because he had 
come out to them, and had risked his own 
life to save them. And so, when he told 
them where they were and what the coast 
was, they believed that he told them the 



16 f}ott> to Become a Christian* 

truth. You can imagine how, before he 
came, they might have discussed the ques- 
tion, one believing that the coast was a 
sandy beach, and another that it was rocky ; 
one arguing that they had better slip their 
anchor chain and beach the ship, and an- 
other arguing that if they did the ship would 
be broken up and they would be drowned. 
But when the stranger came and told them 
where they were, and what sort of a coast it 
was, they believed that he was a true witness 
and told them the truth ; and so their fears 
were taken away, and a new hope was put 
in them. And when he told them what to 
do they obeyed him. They treated him as 
the master or captain of the ship, followed 
his orders, and were saved. 

Now, men have discussed a great deal 
about the mystery of life and the mystery 
of death : about what is the world beyond 
the grave, and how to get safely to the land 
of peace and light. And Christ comes into 
the world and says, "I have come from the 
land of peace and light, to show you how to 
get there safely; I have come from my 
Father and your Father ; and if you will fol- 
low my directions, I will bring you safely 
through life and safely through death, to 
your Father's house and your house." To 



§ovo to Become a Christian* 17 

believe in Christ is to believe that he is a 
true witness ; that he knows what he is talk- 
ing about when he talks about life and death 
and heaven and God ; that he tells us, 
not what he has thought or guessed or rea- 
soned out, but what he has seen and known ; 
it is to trust in him because of the life he 
has lived and the death he has died and the 
love he has shown toward us, and so to have 
our fears lightened or taken away and a new 
hope given to us; and it is to obey his 
directions, and so to be saved by him. 

To be a Disciple is to be a pupil in Christ's 
school. 

To be a Believer is to trust in Christ, to 
believe what he says, and to obey his di- 
rections. 

Ill ^ollotsers* 

Christians are followers of Christ. What 
is it to be Christ's follower? 

When I was a boy I used to play a game 
called " Follow your leader." We chose one 
of our number for a leader, who started on 
a run, picking out difficult places — over the 
fence, through the bushes, across the marsh, 
leaping the brook, up the cliff side ; the rest 
followed. If he was daring and advent- 
urous, the company grew less as the run 



18 I}otD to Become a Christian* 

continued, and the smaller and the less en- 
during boys dropped off one by one. In 
this game we all followed a leader ; what he 
did we attempted. During the Civil War 
General Sherman turned away from Chatta- 
nooga, and, leaving his supplies behind him, 
started on an ever-memorable march to the 
Atlantic Ocean. His soldiers followed him. 
But in this real and serious game of follow 
your leader, General Sherman did not always 
go at the head of the column. Probably he 
was generally nearer the center or even the 
rear. There were usually two or three col- 
umns, and yet, though the leader may have 
followed the army, the army followed their 
leader. They were inspired by his purpose, 
caught his spirit, endeavored to do his work, 
to go as he directed. They were as truly 
followers of General Sherman as, in the boy- 
ish game, we were followers of a leader. 

But often, in this following of a leader, 
there is no march, no body of men, no literal 
leading. In the last presidential campaign, 
Mr. Cleveland was the leader of the Dem- 
ocratic party; and Mr. Harrison was the leader 
of the Republican party. In England Mr. 
Gladstone is the leader of the Liberal party. 
In this case the party follows its leader as truly 
as General Sherman's soldiers followed their 



V}oxv to Become a Christian, 19 

leader, or we boys our leader, but in a differ- 
ent way. They agree with him in his spirit, 
his purpose, his general plans. They want 
to accomplish the same things which he 
wants to accomplish. They look up to him 
as the one to direct their movements and 
determine the methods by which the work is 
to be done. Whenever a body of men or 
boys desire to accomplish anything together 
they have a leader, and they follow him. If 
there are a dozen men working on a road, 
one is a leader. If there are fifty men work- 
ing in a factory, one is a leader; foreman 
they call him — that is, man at the fore or 
head or lead. If every man were to attempt 
to do the work in his own w T ay, nothing 
would ever be done. Each man must be 
willing to give up his own way, and must 
work in his leader's way. A body of men 
without a leader is a mob ; a body of men 
with a leader is an army. It is the leader 
that makes the difference. 

Now, Jesus Christ came into the world to 
do certain work. In His first sermon in the 
synagogue at Nazareth He tells us what this 
work is. 

"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been 
brought up; and, as his custom was, he went into the 
synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to 



20 - tyovo to Become a Christian. 

read. And there was delivered unto him the book of 
the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the 
book he found the place where it was written: 

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath 
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath 
sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver- 
ance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the 
blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach 
the acceptable year of the Lord. . . . And he be- 
gan to say unto them, This day is this Scripture ful- 
filled in your ears/' 

This is what Christ came into the world 
for. To be a follower of Christ is to take up 
this work under his leadership, and attempt 
to carry it on in his spirit and according to 
his methods. 

One day, a little after he had preached 
this sermon at Nazareth, he was at Caper- 
naum. Capernaum was by the shore of a lake, 
and the people were crowding about to hear 
him. He saw some boats on the shore, and 
the fishermen cleaning their nets, and he 
asked one of the fishermen to lend him a boat. 
He pushed it a little off from the shore, 
while the people stood or sat on the beach 
which sloped down to the water's edge. He 
sat in the prow of the boat, as a kind of pul- 
pit, and preached to them. And when he had 
preached the sermon he advised the fisher- 
men to push out into the lake and let down 



£}ott> to Become a Christian, 21 

their nets again ; they did so, and caught a 
great quantity of fish. When they brought 
their fish to shore he said, Follow me, and 
I will make you fishers of men. And they 
forsook their boats and their fish and followed 
him. They became followers of Christ — 
that is, they caught his spirit, took up his 
work, and tried to carry it on in his methods. 
They did not always literally follow him. 
For, a little later, he sent them out two by 
two to preach the Gospel and heal the sick. 
While he went to the great towns they went 
to the villages. But they were doing the 
same sort of work, in the same way, with 
the same spirit. 

To be a follower of Christ, then, is to have 
Christ's spirit ; to try to do Christ's work 
in Christ's way. It is to tell glad tidings to 
the poor, to comfort the broken-hearted, to 
teach the ignorant, to try to make other 
people about you happier, wiser, and better 
than they would be but for your presence. 
In Plymouth Church there is a Mission 
Band of boys and girls which meets once a 
week to do mission work. The girls 
sew ; the boys make screens and scrap-books 
for the hospitals. They are trying to do the 
same kind of work Christ did when he was 
here. They are following Christ. But one 



22 tyovo to Become a Christian. 

does not need to wait for a mission band. 
The little girl who takes care of brother or 
sister in order to help mother, the boy who 
tries to be loyal in school and manly in play 
and fair everywhere, and never to bully 
smaller boys, or, if he can help it, allow 
smaller boys to be bullied, who tries to do 
what will be fair and just and kind and true, is 
following Christ. For this is the work Christ 
did, and left his followers to do after him. 

The minister preaches on Sunday morning, 
and his congregation listens to his teaching ; 
they are disciples. He visits them in their 
homes and they like to see him come, be- 
cause they like him and believe that he is a 
good man and they would like to be like him. 
They are believers. Sunday afternoon he 
goes out to a schoolhouse to preach, and his 
people go, some to Sunday-school and some 
to hospitals and some return to their own 
homes, to teach men to be better or to make 
men happier. They are followers. Are you 
trying to do a little of Christ's work in Christ's 
way ? Then you are a follower of Christ. 

TV. Brethren, 

Christians are called brethren in the New 
Testament. What does this mean? What 
is it to be a brother to other Christians? 



£}ovo to Become a Christian, 23 

You know what it is to have a brother, 
and you love him just because he is your 
brother. Perhaps he is a great tease; but 
you love him notwithstanding his teasing. 
You would not stand the teasing from any 
one else ; but you stand it from him because 
he is your brother. Or, if you are so unfor- 
tunate as not to have a brother you envy the 
other boys and girls who have one. You 
wish you had one. And when some play- 
mate of yours scolds about her brother you 
think to yourself, if she had no brother for a 
few weeks she would be glad enough to get 
him back again, no matter if he is sometimes 
ugly and cross, or if he teases, or if he ex- 
pects her to run his errands and do his chores 
for him. We love our brothers and sisters 
because they are ours ; because they belong 
to us ; because we have the same father and 
mother, and the same home, and the same 
great interests, and because we have lived 
together and do live together. 

But there are individual interests that bind 
us together in what we sometimes call bro- 
therhoods. Then there are individual in- 
terests that bind us together in what we 
call clubs. There are art clubs, and 
musical clubs, and lawyers' clubs, business 
men's clubs, and authors clubs, and politi- 



24 §ow to Become a Christian. 

cal clubs. There are various trade so- 
cieties formed on a similar principle. The 
bankers, the brokers, the merchants, the law- 
yers, the plumbers, the carpenters, the doc- 
tors, the ministers, the miners, the longshore- 
men, all have their unions or societies, in 
which they meet and discuss their common 
concerns. Sometimes these unions or clubs 
are called " brotherhoods ;" but, whether 
they are called so or not, they are all really 
brotherhoods. 

Then there are still larger interests that 
unite us. We are citizens of the same city, 
the same State, the same country. We do 
not often think of this larger brotherhood 
unless something occurs to make us think of 
its value. You are traveling in France, and 
for a week or two you have met only French- 
men, or perhaps Englishmen ; one day in a 
hotel you happen on an American, and at 
once you fall into conversation. You find 
he came from the same State, lives in the 
same town, used to go to the same school 
you went to, belongs to the same political 
party, knows and loves some of your best 
friends ; at each new discovery you have a 
greater interest in one another. You be- 
come at once something like brothers, be- 
cause you have so much in common. 



£)ott> to Become a Christian. 25 

Now these illustrations may help you to 
see how it is that all Christians constitute 
one great brotherhood. They are all pupils 
in the same school, learning the same lesson, 
of the same Teacher. They all believe in 
the same Friend, and Saviour, love him above 
every one else in the world, revere and 
honor him above all others. They are all en- 
gaged under him in doing the same work, 
are followers of the same Leader, belong to 
the same army, are citizens of the same king- 
dom of God. It is true that they are divided 
up into different churches — that is, into dif- 
ferent brotherhoods ; but all these brother- 
hoods make one great brotherhood, some- 
what as all the States make one great 
United States. The Nation is greater than 
the States which make the Nation ; so the 
Church is greater than the churches which 
make the Church. 

Every Christian ought to belong to this 
brotherhood. This does not mean that 
every Christian ought to belong to a church. 
If the churches did not require anything of 
those who wished to join them, except love 
for Christ and a desire to learn of him and 
do his work, then I think every one ought to 
join a church. But they nearly all of them 
require something more. If you were a 



2t> i^oto to Become a (Christian. 

Protestant, and lived where there was noth- 
ing but a Roman Catholic church, you could 
not join it, because you would not believe 
that the Pope can make no mistake. On 
the other hand, there are many Congrega- 
tional and Presbyterian churches which 
many of you could not join, because they 
would require you to say you believed a 
great many things that you are too young as 
yet to understand — I somewhat doubt 
if the older people understand them. 
It is never right to pretend to believe some- 
thing we do not really believe. But 
it is not necessary to join a church in 
order to join the brotherhood. You join 
the brotherhood if you are really trying 
to learn what they are trying to learn, 
and to do what they are trying to do ; 
if you believe in and love and revere the 
Master other Christians believe in and love 
and revere; and therefore want to do 
all the little you can to help them, and are 
willing to take all the help they can give you. 
I knew two boys once in a boarding-school, 
about eleven or twelve years old, one of whom 
was an Episcopalian and the other a Congre- 
gationalism They roomed together, and every 
night they had prayers together, sometimes 
with the Prayer-Book and sometimes with- 



£}orv to Become a Christian, %7 



out ; and they used to talk with each o^her, 
and tell each other their temptations, and 
discuss together how to overcome them. 
They may have been a little morbid and 
sentimental sometimes — I rather think they 
were. But they were brethren, and belonged 
to the great Brotherhood, although one of 
them certainly did not join a church till four 
or five years later. 

To belong to the brotherhood is to love 
every one who loves Christ because he loves 
Christ, and to want to help every one who is 
trying to do Christ's work because it is 
Christ's work. And that the smallest child 
can do. 

V. Saints. 

The fifth word used in the New Testa- 
ment to designate a Christian is Saints. 

When I was a child I used to think that 
only aged persons could be saints. They 
must be gray-haired, and very solemn, and 
very wise and very pious, and very fond of 
praying, reading the Bible, and singing 
hymn tunes. And as I was merry, and 
fonder of other l?ooks than of the Bible, and 
of other songs than " Watts and Select/' I 
thought it was quite impossible for me to be 
a saint. This was a mistake. 



i4fc -Ootp to become a Christian. 

Tnere are two words in our Bible, "saint " 
and lv holy," which mean the same thing; 
tney mean " given to God." One may not 
be wiser or better or older or more fond of 
the Bible or psalms and hymns than his com- 
panions ; but if he is " given to God " he is a 
saint. 

In Jerusalem, on two hills, separated by a 
deep ravine, were two magnificent build- 
ings, one God's Temple, the other Solo- 
mon's Palace. Imagine that a goldsmith is 
employed to prepare two cups, one for the 
Temple and the other for the Palace. He 
gets a lump of gold and cuts it into two 
equal parts ; he beats them both out on the 
anvil ; fashions them both into the same 
shape; engraves the same vine on them 
both ; and when they are finished they stand 
before him, two twin cups, made of the 
same material and of the same workmanship. 
One he sends to the Temple for God's serv- 
ice — it is a holy cup ; the other he sends to 
the Palace for the king's use — it is a secular 
cup. The one is given to God, the other is 
not. There are two girls of the same age, 
going to the same school and the same 
church, sharing the same lessons, playing 
the same games. One has given herself to 
God, has resolved to do his work, obey his 



£)otr> to Tltcomz a Christian 29 



will, and is trying to become like his well-b^, , 
loved Son ; the other is living just to nave a 
good time ; the first is a saint, the second is 
not. The first may have a quick temper; 
may say every day something which she is 
sorry at night that she has said. The other 
may be naturally so amiable that she never 
speaks a sharp, cross, ugly word. But if the 
first has given herself to God, and is trying 
to control her temper, she is a saint ; and if 
the other is living without thought of or 
care for God, she is not a saint. To be a 
saint is not to be perfect ; it is to be given 
to God. The cup was a holy cup, even 
while the goldsmith was making it, if he was 
making it for God ; and the child is a saint, 
even while he is a-making, if he is trying to 
be God's child. 

But there is one other thing to be said 
about the saint. If you give yourself to a 
friend and if your friend gives himself to 
you, you and your friend will gradually grow 
to be like one another. If you are very 
fond of a book, and read it over and over 
again, it will make you like itself. If a 
young man is constantly reading Carlyle, he 
will by and by come to use a style like Car- 
lyle's. If he is a great admirer of some hero 
of history, like Cromwell or Franklin, and 



30 §oxv> to Become a (Christian, 

reads and re-reads about him continually, he 
will grow to be a little like him. If his hero 
is a living hero, not a dead one, the influence 
will be greater. If he goes Sunday after 
Sunday to listen to some great preacher, 
like Mr. Spurgeon or Phillips Brooks, and 
loves and admires the preacher and wants 
to be like him, by and by he will come to 
think as the preacher thinks and feel as 
the preacher feels. And if he should not 
merely go to hear him, but should live 
with the preacher, work with the preacher, 
and day by day do what the preacher 
desired him to do, he would grow still more 
like him, and more rapidly like him. So, if 
we give ourselves to God, and God gives 
himself to us we gradually grow like God. 
To be a saint is not to be like God, it is to 
be given to God. But if we give ourselves to 
God, to love him, and serve him, and do his 
will, and be like him, little by little we shall 
grow like him. This is what Paul means 
when he says : " We all, reflecting as from a 
mirror the image of the Lord, are changed 
into the same image from glory to glory." 
To be a saint is not to have this change fin- 
ished ; it is to be looking at the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and trying to reflect the Lord Jesus 
Christ to others, and so to be, little by lit- 



fyoiv to become a (Ltjrtsttart. 31 

tic cnanging into the likeness of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

So you see that the meaning of the word 
saint includes the meaning of all the other 
words. To be a saint is to be a disciple, 
learning what Jesus has to teach ; and a be- 
liever, trusting in Jesus as a friend; and a 
follower, trying to do Jesus' work. It is not 
to have succeeded, it is to make the en- 
deavor. 

I have tried in these papers to explain to 
you what it is to be a Christian. Do you 
wish to be one ? Are you ready to resolve 
that you will be one? If so, why not at 
once? Read over carefully the pledge on 
the next page ; think what it means ; talk it 
over with your father or mother ; and then, 
if you are resolved to try to learn what 
Christ has to teach, to do Christ's work, to 
accept Christ as a friend and a helper and to 
welcome the help of all who are like-minded, 
cut out or copy this pledge and sign it. If 
you do so, I advise you to sign two copies ; 
keep one for yourself, and give one to your 
father or mother 



32 £)otp to Become a Christian, 

The pledge is as follows : 



I Resolve by God's Help to be : 

••• 

A ©#cipfe, seeking to learn what Christ has to 

teach ; 
A "SBtfietier, trusting in Christ as my Friend, 

my Helper, and my Saviour ; 
A ifcHoUJer, trying to do Christ's work in 

Christ's way ; 
And in this endeavor I will welcome the 

help of all who have the same purpose. 

Name, 

Date, . 

e 



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